UK women avenge last month’s close loss to Vandy, 71-55

It was a missed assignment here, a lack of intensity for a few minutes, a botched box out.

The little things have meant a lot to Kentucky this season.

They’ve meant the difference between a close loss and a close win.

So Coach Matthew Mitchell went back and showed his team how one simple thing changed the course of so many games.

Close losses to Vanderbilt, South Carolina and Florida all were haunting reminders of just how big those little things turned out to be.

“We have lost some games where we weren’t very intense on defense and we were losing by two points, three points, and it’s just so frustrating,” Mitchell said. “So we really tried to get everybody to buy in on the defensive end of the floor.”

The No. 18 Cats did just that on Sunday at Memorial Gym, putting away Vanderbilt 71-55, forcing 24 turnovers. It was their most forced miscues since December.

Kentucky turned those 24 mistakes into 24 points, which helped them avenge a two-point loss in Lexington a couple of weeks ago.

“What we were doing on the defensive end really fueled our offense,” said senior Janee Thompson, who had 15 points for UK, which opened the game with a 10-2 run. “We were a lot sharper today, a lot more focused, and our communication was pretty unbelievable.”

After Kentucky’s strong start — holding Vanderbilt without a point for five minutes and forcing 10 turnovers in the first 11 minutes — the Commodores righted their ship.

They recovered to make a run of their own and grab their first and only lead, 17-16, on a Rebekah Dahlman three-pointer midway through the second quarter.

Kentucky (17-6, 6-6 SEC) responded with a 12-2 run, including seven straight points, to end the first half with a 28-19 lead. Thompson was the catalyst in that spree, hitting two three-pointers and assisting on the Cats’ two other baskets.

Mitchell called that little flurry before the break “huge” for Kentucky’s confidence.

“We should have been up more at that time,” he said, noting the multitude of missed layups for UK. “We were really dominating in shot attempts, but just couldn’t get anything to fall.

“We were having such a hard time and, for our team this year, that’s been deflating.”

Alexis Jennings, who scored a game-best 18 points for Kentucky, had 12 in the first half when she made six of her eight shot attempts compared to the rest of the team, which went 7-for-26 in the first half, many on misses from close range.

The 18 points for the sophomore forward was her most since the third game of the season. She played with intensity on both ends of the floor, teammates and coaches said.

“We met together and just talked about what we had to do, and it all started in practice, pushing defensive pace to get stops,” Jennings said after the win in which she added six rebounds, including five on the defensive end. “That really helped us in this game.”

Junior forward Evelyn Akhator added 10 points and guard Makayla Epps added seven points, six assists and four rebounds for Kentucky, which has topped Vanderbilt (15-10, 4-8) 10 of the last 11 meetings. The lone outlier was the 71-69 loss at Memorial Coliseum a couple of weeks ago.

In that loss, Christa Reed torched UK for 19 points, including five three-pointers. She paced Vanderbilt, which lost its fourth straight, with 17 points on Sunday.

That January defeat stuck with Kentucky. It was clear some things had to change.

“We were really disappointed about that loss on our home floor, and we didn’t think we played very hard,” Thompson said.

So the Cats took a couple of days off this week thanks to a bye and regrouped.

They worked on becoming a better team, especially on the defensive end. They’ll need to be during their final stretch of four games, which include trips to No. 11 Mississippi State on Thursday and to No. 15 Texas A&M to close out the regular season on Feb. 28.

“We aren’t a dominant defensive team one-on-one,” Mitchell said. “We really have to be a cohesive unit and we really have to play hard together. We need to try and see if we can do that a bunch of times here down the stretch.”

This story was originally published February 14, 2016 at 3:23 PM with the headline "UK women avenge last month’s close loss to Vandy, 71-55."